The intellectual tension that seems to work its way through this society almost like fat through meat is the tension between scientific reductionism and the deeply felt intuition of most people that there is a spiritual dimension, or a hidden dimension, or a transcendental dimension.
Terence McKennaI finally realized that this 'place' that I kept bursting into [on a psychedelic experience] was somebody's idea of a playpen.
Terence McKennaI have a skeptical and cranky side, and I'm forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they choose to believe.
Terence McKennaWhat WE represent is the nexus of concrescent novelty that has been moving itself together, complexifying itself, folding itself in upon itself for billions and billions of years. There is, so far as we know, nothing more advanced than what is sitting behind your eyes. The human neocortex is the most densely ramified complexified structure in the known universe.
Terence McKennaMeaning lies in the confrontation of contradiction - the coincidencia apositorum. Thatโs what we really feel, not these rational schemes that are constantly beating us over the head with the โthou shaltsโ and โthou shouldโ, but rather a recovery of the real ambiguity of being and an ability to see ourselves as at once powerful and weak, noble and ignoble, future-oriented, past-facing.
Terence McKenna